Perceiving Deep Order, or “Does God Exist?”

It depends what you mean by “god”. It depends what you mean by “exist”.

This is really The Question, isn’t it?

Is there a right answer to all this messy “life” stuff? And is there somebody out there, sitting in judgement, waiting to see whether I (in the midst of an infinite number possible wrong answers) stumble upon it? Is there guidance, or are we just drifting through the universe making meaning as we go?

Proposition 1: God does exist

In one sense of the word “exist”, I can argue logically not only for the existence of God, but of a god who has the power to shape reality… and it is this: There exist persistent pattern(s) in the universe that have colonized our minds and structured our societies. Because we attribute “ultimate cause” to these patterns, they have tremendous power. These gods exist the same way that corporations exist… as structures that have sway over people’s actions, to which they devote their skills and talents, and for the persistence of which they are willing to make great sacrifice. For some reason, the New Atheists, while siding so vehemently with reason and scepticism, use appallingly sloppy arguments, and the question of the existence of god(s) slides over rapidly into the question of whether religion is a constructive or destructive force in our social organization. In this debate, the question of “God” is deferred or considered a closed question by both sides, and the entire argument becomes about the particular claims of a particular religion.

We, who live in the realm of ideas, like to think that we consider two measures of truth. One is correspondence, or how well the ideas correspond to observed “reality” (that is, the phenomenal world). The second is coherence, or how internally consistent a complete set of ideas is. Despite the claims of their true believers, religions tend not to hold up well under either of these rubrics. I’m not, however, about to sweep them away with that. Because they do provide something important which is frequently neglected by those of us who are dedicated to “rational” pursuits. Let us add two more measures of “truth” that people use implicitly: comfort and context.

When Marx said that religion was the opiate of the masses, he didn’t mean that it made them stupid. He meant that it provided them with an illusion that allowed them to continue to function in the face of massive injustice and structural suffering. He did call for them to throw off this illusion and unite against the structures, which didn’t work out so well. (I believe that they (we) are unlikely to, for very good reasons related to comfort, context, and identity formation, but that’s another topic.)

What Marx’s analysis points at is the “purpose” of this kind of god, or at least at the mechanisms for its long term persistence and constant re-emergence.

We each need a set of stories that provide context and comfort for wherever we find ourselves in these arcane structures. We ask “why” a lot, particularly about our suffering. Structural analysis has some compelling answers, but tends to leave us, as agents, pretty much subject to the whims of the systems in power unless we can figure out how to recruit many thousands of other agents to act in concert with us. It tends not to give us many tools to cope with the extreme difficulty of getting the many thousands of other agents to stop working on whatever they are working on and work on what we have determined to be the root cause. And when we fail (as we often do), it frequently places the weight of that failure on us as individuals. (Can you say activist burn-out? Nihilism? Despair? Any of these sound familiar?) And that’s if we did have access to education in political science, cultural theory, or sociology at the post-secondary level. Most people, even with an education, are navigating a thorny and hostile world with a much emptier meaning-making tool box.

We Need Meaning Because…

How can I put this?

Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people.

We are insignificantly tiny in a universe that is vast. But in our own lives, we are all that there is.

We want to believe that there is meaning, so that we can maintain an illusion of control. We need to believe that there is something we can do to affect change, so we can feel that we are not so much dust in the wind. We want there to be something, some justice, some deep order that will make up for this.

Religion steps up to these problems with two aspects hugely in its favour:

1) The claim that the Lord works in mysterious ways, and/or, Karma, and/or There is an ordering principle to the universe that is just, but we cannot perceive/conceive of that form of justice. (see above)

AND

2) Its most challenging truth-claims can only be tested by dying.

Where we (non-adherents) fail in this conversation is when we fail to recognize that religion is a social technology. It is afforded special status in our culture due to its claim to having access to ultimate cause. But it is not truly (in my model) a separate category of knowledge. It is, however, a category of knowledge that provides particular answers that must be addressed by anything that wishes to supplant it. Nihilism is a crappy substitute. So is any set of answers that logically mean, “Your life sucks, nobody cares, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Suck it up, buttercup.” Yet that’s what a lot of us are offering.

Proposition 2: God does not exist

This is the world I was raised in, the world of the rational sceptic. This is a world in which the level of cognitive dissonance necessary to maintain belief in an all-knowing, all-just, all-loving god is impossible in the face of the banality of evil and the observed indifference of planetary forces. Forces build up in the rocks beneath the ocean, the earth shifts to relieve the tension, and 160,000 people die. We suffer because we suffer. We exist because we exist. “Why?” is not a meaningful question, except in terms of proximate cause.

Let us consider the non-existence of deep order as one of a category of explanations that accept mystery, something uncontemplateable.

The question of the existence of god(s) takes place on the phenomenal level, when it is, in truth, a noumenal question. Facing the problems of suffering, natural disasters, and evil, we attempt to choose among the following possible explanations.

1. There is an ordering principle (god/purpose/ultimate meaning) and…
   1. it is indifferent or
   2. we are too small to be noticed or
   3. it is giving us what we “need” for our personal development or
   4. we have complete control over it but lack the consciousness to exert that control or
   5. its purpose is completely beyond our ken and
   6. the suffering we experience is for some greater good. OR
2. There is no ordering principle; the only meaning in the universe is what we impose. Or, rather, there is an ordering principle, but it is laid out in the governing laws and does not mean anything.

All we have as data to distinguish among these explanations is our experience of the phenomenal world. Despite constant declarations of certainty from all directions, the question of ultimate cause has not been resolved.

Proposition 3: Not Knowing

To conjugate the negation of the verb “To know”:

I don’t know.
You don’t know.
We don’t know.

Doubt is an active process. Not knowing is a state of being.

I don’t know. When the world around me demands certainty, and my existential angst seeks succour.

I don’t know. Confronting the lack of a coherent, comprehensive, correspondent meta narrative that also provides comfort and context is an act of bravery.

What if it is this: agnosticism is not intellectually or spiritually lazy. It is honest. (What if?)

Proposition 4: God does exist (2)

In another sense, I can argue for a completely different sort of god. There is a verse in the Bhagavad Gita in which Krishna, having come to Arjuna in a moment of crisis, reveals himself in all his glory. He must first loan Arjuna his own capacities of perception so that he can endure the moment. I described it to my son thus: “Imagine suddenly being aware of the deep vastness of the universe, knowing every moment of star birth and death, every moment of living ecstasy, every moment of anger, suffering, agony, hatred, everything that ever was, is, or shall be.” His eyes became very large. “And Arjuna, faced with the overwhelming scale of reality, is-ness, said, ‘No, no! I changed my mind. You were right, it is too much!'”

When I was in India, the morning of Diwali in 2012, standing in the field outside the kitchen with my sweet, hot, milky tea in a stainless steel cup with no handle, wrapped in a blanket against the cooling November mornings, I watched the sun rise over the foothills of the Himalayas. I watched the growing disc until the light became unbearable and I had to look away. And this verse of the Gita came to mind. That evening, I watched from a distance as Swami Veda performed the sacrifices (milk and ghee) at the shrines. I watched him bring his very tired, very ill body out into the world to be the hope of this community, and I wept. And into my mind this time sprang the words, “We cannot look upon the face of God, so he gives us one another.”

At other moments, I have cast my eyes skywards, begging for things to be different. For the world to be kinder, for people to be more loving, for world peace and prosperity, for a sane relationship with technology. And the words came these times, “I only have your hands to work through.” That is, not my hands, but ours. If we want to move our world towards a god of love and compassion, we are the ones who have to make the change in ourselves. The gods that appear in the world are the ones we manifest.

This is still a universe that will eat us, and is perhaps still indifferent, at least on its vast scales, but it is one with which we can connect and communicate locally. It is a universe that is conscious because we are conscious**. It is a universe that suffers because we suffer. And it is a universe that desires great beauty because we desire great beauty.

It is probably disingenuous to call this “god”, but when I use deistic language (which I do), this is what I mean.

Proposition 5: It is not a relevant question

The Buddha refused to discuss metaphysical issues. They were not part of the practice, and their pursuit distracted one from the true goal of awakening.

I read this, and I had no idea what it meant. And then one day, I was in the middle of a conversation over lunch, and it all became clear. For a moment at least.

When we are in the present, truly in non-duality, it does not matter. The existence or non-existence of a creator, or a grand purpose, or divinity, is not relevant to the process of waking up. He was saying, in some sense, “I gave you the system. Work the system. Stop asking questions outside the system. They’re distracting you.”

As you can see, I haven’t gotten there yet.

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Note: I do not mean the material realm. I include mystical experiences in the realm of phenomena. The gravest error I see scientists commit is to dismiss phenomena because either they have not experienced them directly, or because they cannot conceive of a mechanism. Mystical practices purport to provide a means of disintermediation between the self and the noumenal… they posit or narrate interpretations of a phenomenal realm that exists “closer” to the field/noumena. A large fraction of scientific investigation into consciousness relies on observations of the brain in such altered states, which at least has gotten us to the point of being able to acknowledge that these are real, physical phenomena. (As are hallucinations, so let us not mistake certainty for knowledge.) It is equally an error to mistake “mechanism” for “cause”. These mental states correspond to physical phenomenon, but it does not follow that the physical phenomenon causes the perception of reality.

** Our consciousness is sufficient for there to be a conscious universe. It is not necessary. Also, the fact that we are conscious does not prove that other parts of the universe are not. All I am really claiming is that a) I am conscious. b) Therefore the universe is conscious. See also: At least some of the universe wants to know why it is here, at least some of the time.

“Position Yourself,” He Said

(This blog has a glossary. Or it will, someday.)

When I was in grad school the second time, I signed up for a course taught by a radical queer theorist/anthropologist. Because that’s what all physics teachers need, you know?

My very first assignment in this course was to summarize the readings (three full length academic papers) on a single page and then ask three questions that had been sparked by reading them. The questions I asked were about why people are so inclined to categorize one another, whether there is some underlying biological drive to separate ourselves based on physical characteristics. His response was the most useful, if not the most traditional, that I’ve ever gotten. What he said was, “Frankly, I don’t really care.”

“Look,” he continued. “The point of this course is to explore the discourse around race. How does race work as a category? How is it constructed as a valid way of thinking about the world? I need you to pay attention to your reading practices. Don’t write response papers, I’m not interested in your responses. I want to know whether you understand, whether you have grappled with the material. Don’t rush to apply before you really know what it is that the author is saying.”

This, to a room full of graduate students, some of whom were several years into writing response papers for nearly every course. You could hear the panic building. What do you mean, don’t react? What do you mean, don’t respond? Don’t apply? I thought that was the “highest” point of development on Bloom’s taxonomy?

“Look,” he said again (he said, “look” a lot), “Your reaction, your initial response, it’s coming from somewhere, from your position in the world. If you find yourself resistant, that’s important. You need to look at what is going on inside your head, what identity you are coming with that is triggering that reaction.” I wrinkled my brow. He had been kind enough not to share whose paper he was dissecting, but I knew. Specifically, I knew that I had been reading a lot of evolutionary biology recently, and that the questions I asked came directly from that school of thought. I also knew (was able to hear) that it was the wrong knowledge tradition to bring to this classroom.

Over the course of that term, I discovered that I was white, middle class, educated. White, I tell you! Yes, I knew I was white. But I never really thought about it. I didn’t have to. This is the essence of privilege, not to have to be aware of categories, as long as you belong to the default. It grants you unearned power. We don’t have to cover privilege right now; it will be a recurring theme.

He asked us to leave our identities at the door, to enter the classroom with open minds, willing to hear the stories of The Other, willing to accept subjective realities that we had no language to encounter. He had us read Frantz Fanon’s work, and I didn’t understand it, but I mulled it, turned it around in my mind, let it sit, until one day I did understand, and I had to stop the car because I was crying too hard to drive.

Who are you?

Position yourself. How do others see you? How do you identify yourself?

Well, I’m a white, middle class, educated, English-speaking, North American. I am also a feminist, and a socialist, and a bleeding-heart liberal, and a queer-identified, male-partnered mother of three. I have a science education and can read math and source code. (This has its own form of privilege in a culture which so values the rational.) I have a tremendous amount of power and opportunity, and a lived experience of constraints just severe enough to remind me that maybe not everything is possible, that we don’t make it on our own, and that resources are not equitably divided.

But who am I? I am more than the sum of my labels, even if I could pull them all into one place. I am (you are) a time-evolving pattern in the universe, a conscious accumulation of particles, capable of feeling desire, anger, and empathy. I am (you are) the stuff of stars. I am (we are) the universe making sense of itself. One. Human. Interaction. At a time.

Giving Up on Truth Will Set You Free

If you get nothing else from this website, please take away the possibility of this: The pursuit of Truth is a fool’s errand.

Fool’s Errand 1: The Impossible Task

We grow up in a world of competing stories. Call them culture, call them religion, call them beliefs; at heart, they are stories about the world, the universe, and our place in it. Some of them are trivial, at least on the surface (what you must serve at Thanksgiving dinner springs to mind). Some of them encode profound or demanding limitations about the world (never do [this] or you will suffer eternal damnation). When we are small children, the stories we hear are largely determined by the people who are raising us – our parents, grandparents, extended family, church or social community. Even our access to media is limited. The degree of certainty of our “truths” depends on the degree of certainty of the people presenting it to us.

We are taught to deny our (inner) truths, the things that we know or suspect about ourselves, and to defer to the dominant stories of our tribes. And we suffer for it, trying to fit ourselves into ill-fitting costumes the size of a life. Someday we wake up, and find ourselves thinking, “Is this really all there is? Is that it?”

The stakes are high. The clock is ticking. And someday you are going to die.

No pressure.

Liberation: You are Probably Wrong

Here is something I want you to hear. You are one of billions of people on the planet. Your experiences are necessarily limited. It is the nature of experience to be partial. You are not The One with the final answers. (Neither am I, just to be clear.)

I want you to release yourself from the requirement of being Right. This is not easy. It runs contrary to almost all of our upbringings. If you can’t do it right now, allow me to suggest this: Entertain the mere possibility that you are not required to be Right.

And then I want you to step forward in freedom, recognizing that They are not Right, either. This truth-seeking is a lifetime practice, a path to right relationship with the world. It is not a task of choosing among (limited, partial) competing stories, each of which claims to be The Way. It is a recognition that you carry part of the story of the universe in your embodiment, and that each person and being that you daily encounter is also carrying a part of the story of the universe. Together we are keepers of the storylines.

Fool’s Errand 2: Beginner’s Mind

It is not to be said that I claim that nothing is true. I am a scientist, a philosopher, and a storyteller. I demand that my worldviews have some correspondence with my observed reality. Here are my limitations: I experience my interior world as though I have free will, and I experience a world “out there” as though it actually exists. I cannot seriously entertain worldviews that deny either of those claims.

That leaves me a wide range of possibility. I suggest this as a liberatory practice: when encountering something new, set aside, for a moment, your existing models. Don’t start with judgment. Approach with curiosity. What is the nature of this story? What questions does it purport to answer? What does it make possible in the world? What does it make impossible? I promise you, this is not just intellectually lazy. It is a way of engaging with truth claims that allows for possibility. It is challenging to engage with ideas as neither right nor wrong, but partial, particularly those which demand that you cease to exist, or that claim their right to extinguish your thoughts. I do not ask you to accept all ideas as equally valid… but don’t be so quick to reject, or to react from your existing models.

Approach with beginners mind: If I didn’t already “know” all that I know, how would that change things? Let it become a compassion practice…

And breathe.

Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner

On Writing is a wonderful book. It is a fine piece of storytelling from a fine storyteller, and full of concrete and useful advice. But I think it steered me wrong in one respect. “Don’t,” Stephen King said, “put your desk in the middle of the room. Place it in the corner to remind yourself that your art is a support system for your life, and not the other way around.”

Fine advice for a person who is wont to place their own needs and the demands of their art above that of their family. But not the best plan, I would say, for a woman who has been waiting for permission to speak for 20 years.

I come through the very hierarchical knowledge tradition of the university… last gasp of the guild network? It is not a place for radical ideas (unless you can refer them to the ideas of prior radicals). It is a place where certain questions are unaskable, fitting outside the parameters of all the existing containers.  These are the questions that require art, rather than academics. For 15 years, I tried to make them fit into the inappropriate box of one university degree program after another. Some I finished, some I didn’t. In the process, I “obtained” an absurd amount of education (as though it were something one could have). Yet I internalized the message that it wasn’t enough, that it was never enough, that if it wasn’t approved by external bodies (with funding and appointments and invitations to speak) I was not enough. The university is not a good place for a person with radical ideas and a need for permission. Those are not compatible. Actually, those are just not compatible. A university education/institutionalization simply reinforces the existing structures. You may speak when you’ve finished your degree… No, when you’ve finished your Ph.D… No, when you get a faculty position… No, when you have tenure… You may speak when you have tenure. The problem is that, by the time you have tenure, the desire to speak may have left you some years earlier.

I went to a conference on Science and Society in 2005 at which global warming was not mentioned. Some of the most innovative thinkers in the country came together to discuss the impacts of science and technology on our lives, and we ignored the most obvious and pressing issue of the day. This is the culture I was “raised” in (intellectually speaking). We are well trained to play it safe, to make sure that we don’t say anything too far out of the box. We may expand the box slightly, but outside the box? That’s for Stars. And you, my dear (They Say again and again) are no star. The ones who escape that are the ones who have the courage of their convictions… who learn to listen to the secret voice at the back of their heads that says, “Actually, I think that is important, even if I haven’t managed to convince you of it.”

That is the voice of art. It is the voice I was raised to ignore.

Our spaces and actions betray our interior lives. For me, the act of placing my desk in the corner of the living room put me at the center of the maelstrom of family life, always prone to doing “just one more load of laundry” or reading one more story to the children, or finding one more task of maintenance that must be done to the house before the writing could be allowed to take the stage. For four months this spring, I participated in the Post-a-Day challenge on WordPress (under another name). I managed to do it, but only by writing late into the evening, and only (often) by writing below my own standards, and only (occasionally) by fudging the date of a post backwards by 25 minutes. It’s fine; the whole point of it was to make my writing a part of my daily practice. What it taught me, though, was that I didn’t feel entitled to write. I didn’t feel entitled to think. And I certainly didn’t feel entitled to make writing enough of a priority that it took up actual space in my life. My art, by being stuck in the corner, was consigned to the scraps of time and resources left over when everybody else’s life was taken care of.

In starting this new blog, I am taking up space. I am taking the risk of being called arrogant. I am taking the risk of being wrong. (I will almost certainly be wrong… again and again and again. It is the nature of thinking.) I am taking the risk of being thought ridiculous. But I am taking up space. I have claimed, as my office, the very center of the room that is to become the yoga studio and classroom. I have the best view on the property. It is in a separate building, without phone or laundry or the chance for me to do just 10 more minutes of work on the kitchen. It has a place of honor.

I honor the art. For a time, my life must become the container for true practice.